The Struggle Is Part Of The Story

My hands tremble And my heart races, I just finished peeing on Sticks with smiley faces Pregnant until proven otherwise No ibuprofen or drinking, Spend the next few days Symptom spotting and over thinking Waiting turns from days To hours and minutes, I have this lovely womb Now it is time to see if you are in it Dreaming of the day To hear your heart beat, And see two little hands With two little feet Lost and uncertain With what will happen next, Will I have to start all over Or soon be holding you abreast In the end, we all know Exactly how the two week wait goes, You get a positive test or The red river flows

Sometimes people like to use the term artificial insemination interchangeably with intrauterine insemination. I find this term to be completely insensitive. The word artificial literally translates to fake or not real. I am sorry, but the insemination process is real. It's done by a real person, received by a real person, in real time, by real sperm. NOTHING about it is fake. If it wants to allude to the idea that the process by which the insemination happens is not real, then they should really rename it artificial intercourse. That translated would make more sense because I am not having sex, or reaping the benefits that sex gives, I am merely receiving sperm via a catheter. The insemination is real, not artificial. The makings behind this method versus sex is an artificial or alternate version, guy masturbates, sperm is collected, sperm is then inserted. I would love to reinvent the word to make the letter "A" stand for "assistive" insemination. Now that I c...

Mother nature says hi As father time ticks on by The glimmer in my eyes slowly fade While the hope from my heart continues to drain I have lost this battle, but yet not the war For maybe this month I can even the score With two lines to confirm, a baby I seek Who knew creating new life would be such a feat Adding mom and dad to husband and wife Would bring so much meaning into our life My words attempt optimism, my face shows pain Who knows what is next in this infertility game Meanwhile, tragedy and defeat become The only things I feel on cycle day one

When I first found out that IUI was the next stop on our journey, I did exactly what you are doing right now. I looked on the internet for posts from women who also went through this experience. I wanted to know what to expect from the procedure, the statistics of how likely it would be I would end up pregnant, an all encompassing idea of what I am about to endure. I found a couple different blogs with different experiences. Some had ultrasounds, some did not. Some took Clomid others did not. Some were shots, some were pills. I was even more lost than when I started looking and knew I wouldn't know my own journey until I started. My first IUI started with pills, Letrozole was my doctor's pill of choice. The pills are taken for 5 days. Like most medications, it came with side effects. From the first day I took it, I became very nauseous. If I walked too fast down the grocery aisle, I would become nauseous. Carried too much weight, nauseous. After two weeks of that started the...

I was reading an article the other day about a baby born after infertility needing it's own term. That a baby born after a miscarriage or infant loss is a rainbow baby and a baby born before a miscarriage is a sun baby. They also mention the term for babies born asleep, Angel babies. The article said that babies who are conceived after infertility don't have their own term and there needs to be one. So this got me thinking, I had always thought a baby born in the midst of infertility was a rainbow baby?  So I began to ponder, By definition a rainbow is the beauty after the storm. I read this and I thought my struggle is a storm.... It's scary, and dark. It leaves me feeling hopeless at times. My dreams get blown off in the wind. Why wouldn't my baby be a rainbow baby?  After awhile I realized, it doesn't matter what I label my baby. It can be a rainbow baby after my own storm. It can be my warrior baby after a fight I never gave up to be a mother. A little on...

My husband and I just started at a new fertility clinic. We are very excited to start at a clinic that has more options for us; however we remain hesitant to think they have a solution for us. We are already so far into our journey that to start over with handshakes and "how are you" seems like many steps backwards. At our first appointments we we're each given a  "welcome" folder. You know, kind of like when you start a new club and they show you all the fun stuff you are going to do for the year all stuffed into one glorious folder. Our folders, although empty now, will be filled with our own journey.  A whole folder telling our story. Our own procedures that we will undergo, and all of our own tests. After only one month our folders start to fill up. Sheets of test results. Sheets of medication. Sheets providing information of upcoming procedures. Sheets of past procedure results. Physically, the folder feels light, it seems to have a lot of space left in it...

People who have not experienced infertility treatment may think it is so nice to have a planned pregnancy on a schedule. I have heard comments like Wow, how convenient is it that you don't have to do the work of sex and you can actually schedule the day of conception. From the outside looking in, I can see how it might present that way. The idea that its a controlled process, on a specific date with extra help from medical professionals, but convenience and schedules are the last words I would use to describe my infertility treatment. Setting aside the cost of infertility treatment, the treatment itself is, in my opinion, inconvenient. It is solely based on how much I want it so I make it work. I take medication that alters my body, my feelings, my emotions and my thinking. Though this medication lasts only one week, the effects for me are felt about 3 weeks. I follow that with days of tests until one day I get a smiley face and have the privilege of being inseminated the next day...